HRSD to stop making Nutri-Green

The Hampton Roads Sanitation District will stop making Nutri-Green, a popular lawn and garden fertilizer made from locally treated sewage.

HRSD also canceled plans to build a $45 million composting center in York County designed to make the product, general manager Ted Henifin said.

The decisions come as HRSD, which serves 1.6 million people in Hampton Roads and the Middle Peninsula, plans $1.2 billion worth of infrastructure upgrades. It will replace miles of pipeline, rebuild pump stations and make other improvements during the next 10 years.

About 17 percent — or $200 million — of the spending will be directed toward projects that reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, Henifin said. HRSD is acting under orders of the state and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which are drafting tougher regulations for the bay in response to presidential and court orders.

HRSD will save $600,000 annually by no longer making Nutri-Green, Henifin said. The composting center, which would have employed seven people, would not have generated income, he said.

While neither will prevent it from borrowing money and raising sewer fees to pay for the upgrades, they will help curtail costs, Henifin said.

“It was a tough call but I think it was the right thing to do,” he said.

HRSD will continue to send treated sewage to McGill Environmental Systems in Waverly for composting. It will be turned into composting to be used by the agricultural industry, Henifin said.

Retailers of the fertilizer say while it is popular, there are many substitutes available.

“We sell a ton of it,” said Jason Blanchett, general manager of Anderson’s Home and Garden Showplace on Jefferson Avenue in Newport News. “But it’s not going to affect us much at all, there’s plenty of products to take its place.”

York County Administrator James McReynolds said losing the plant is not a huge loss to the community.